The Right Language
by HecateA
Summary: He's self-conscious about his English, she doesn't know a lick of Bulgarian—but numbers? They're both very, very good at numbers.


**Author's note: **Enjoy!

**Hogwarts: **Assignment 1, Paleontology Task #7, Write about someone who is perceived to be unintelligent

**Disclaimer: **The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

**Warnings: **NA

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**The Right Language**

It was another one of their rendez-vous in the library, where Viktor sat at her side with a book before him though he spent his time looking over at her readings or her work instead. Today, that was 18-inches of parchment covered in Arithmancy homework. To be clear, this was Professor Abdullah's bonus equation of the week—not homework per se—but Hermione liked to test her limits with those problems.

"Hermione?" Viktor said quietly, in that very careful way he always said her name to make sure that he hit all the syllables and consonants properly.

"Yes?" she whispered back, looking up.

"I don't mean to intrude," he said quietly. "But I think on the seventeenth line you copied a '3' instead of an '8.'"

She frowned and scanned her work again and… sure enough, he was right. It was one of the mistakes her dyslexic mind made most frequently.

"Oh," she said. "I was wondering why I was suddenly getting negative numbers when dealing with the parenthesis…"

"Me too," Viktor said. "The rest of your work is… hmm… not the word perfect, more than perfect... immaculate."

Hermione couldn't help but smile to herself and it was such a geeky thing to smile about that she hid the shape of her lips from Viktor, bending down to get a fresh scroll of parchment from her backpack. She'd just copy down everything she'd done right and then start doing the mathematics over. That was all.

As she did, it occurred to her that maybe Viktor did this every week. Maybe he wasn't so much as watching her during these sessions as he was watching what she worked on.

"I didn't know you liked Arithmancy," Hermione said when she sat back up.

"I do," Viktor said. "I was top of my class."

"You should come sit in to Dr Abdullah's lectures," Hermione offered. "He's brilliant, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind. Of course, it's only a fourth year class..."

"That is alright. I had to stop taking the class in fourth year," Viktor said.

"Why?" Hermione asked.

"There was a conflict in the schedule and Karkaroff made me take Dark Arts instead," Viktor said. "He wanted me to graduate from Durmstrang as a model student of the school. For his… prestige? Is this the word?"

"Yes," Hermione said. "I'm sorry."

"It is okay," Viktor shrugged. "It is still fun."

"You didn't strike me as the type," Hermione said. "I mean—no offence…"

"Not at all," Viktor said. "Even in Durmstrang, people were… not surprised… shocked?"

"Shocked," Hermione nodded.

"Shocked," Viktor nodded. "And for you it is understandable. My English is not very good."

"It's better than my Bulgarian," Hermione quickly chimed in. It was even better than her Igbo, frankly—the state of which drove her father mad every time she returned for the summer and he was faced with how _bad _it was. She should work on it more.

Viktor smiled, but it seemed a little bit sad for a second. "I wish you could hear me think in Bulgarian or Romani. I would not be as smart as you still, but I would be closer than I am now."

Hermione felt a blush across her cheeks. "I don't… Viktor, I don't think of you as unintelligent. Please, be sure of that…"

"It is okay," Viktor said, waving his hand. "I am just thankful that we have finally found a common tongue."

Hermione smiled and looked back to the parchment full of equations and symbols that stretched before her.

"You know," Hermione said. "I actually really, really don't like Arithmancy."

At that Viktor seemed surprised. His eyebrows shot up.

"But you are very good at it," he said. "Your work is very quick, you avoided all the easy errors that the professor set like traps…"

"I know," Hermione sighed. She bit back her, _but I'm very good at a lot of things. _It just didn't seem appropriate. "But compared to the other things, the more explicitly magical classes, it seems… it's not as invigorating. Energizing."

"I see," Viktor nodded. "So why do you take it? You take so many classes I am sure you could not do this."

"When I was little I wanted to study computer engineering," she said. "It's, hmm… Muggles have a type of machine called a computer. They're quite remarkable, they can do so, _so _much and wizards have nothing quite like it." She paused and evaluated Viktor's face, just to make sure that she wasn't telling him something that he already knew or didn't care about. He looked curious and genuinely interested, so she went on. "Computers speak languages with numbers, they're called programming languages and making them up is called coding. Anyways, Arithmancy is the closest thing to computer sciences that I can do at Hogwarts."

"It is like how I take flying lessons at Durmstrang," Viktor said.

She couldn't help but giggle. "You do?"

"Yes," he said with a grin. "I do not play Quidditch at school, it does not seem fair, and so that is the closest I can get."

"Yes, it's like that," Hermione nodded. She reached out and took his hand under the table. "It's just about doing what you can to get as close as you can get to what you really want."

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**Stacked with: **MC4A; Shipping Wars; Hogwarts

**Individual Challenge(s): **Hola, Bonjour, Jambo; Gryffindor MC; Durmstrang MC; Seeds; Golden Times; Old Shoes; Trope It Up C (Language Barriers); Themes & Things A (Reflection); Themes & Things B (Surprise); Themes & Things E (Pen/Quill); Themes & Things F (Education); Ethnic & Present (Y); Rian-Russo Inversion; In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux

**Word Count: **880

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_**Shipping Wars**_

**Ship (Team): **Hermione Granger/Viktor Krum (Viktory)

**List (Prompt): **Fall Big List (Studying)


End file.
